Conventional approaches to audio and visual media are primarily focused on providing entertainment to the consumer. To facilitate this objective, entertainment-related industries have developed a diverse inventory of electronic devices that provide a mechanism for a consumer to enjoy recorded entertainment or information. Examples of such devices include conventional DVD players, CD players, DAT players, mini-Disc players, TiVo, and the like. However, all of these devices are presumed to be a consumer-purchased item, separate from the content placed therein, the devices all having recordable content capabilities. All of these personal players are also designed for easy transfer of digital content, by the consumer, to the players.
With the advent of digitally coded content and the ease of communicating digital information, copyright protection of the loaded content has become an ever-increasing concern in the entertainment industry. There exists no satisfactory mechanism for preventing the unauthorized copying of digital entertainment or information stored onto the player.
It is also recognized that entertainment has within it secondary or consumer influence attributes such as advertising, cross marketing, or branding, when used in addition to the entertainment. The full potential of such secondary value has not been fully exploited because the played entertainment or content is often experienced in a surrounding that is disassociated from the seller of the player, who may be a sponsor of the entertainment or content. Thus, secondary value, such as tying the content in the player to the seller's venue cannot be exploited.
Therefore, there has been a longstanding need for systems and methods that safeguard copyright protection and also enable correlation of the content with the seller's venue or objective.